t the sound of
the thunder, and he vowed to refuse no honourable terms of peace. In was
in this cathedral that Henry of Navarre received the crown of France, a
new holy oil of Marmoutiers being extemporized to supply the place of
the inaccessible holy oil of Rheims. The history of the city and county
in earlier times is closely mixed up with those of France, Normandy,
Anjou, and Champagne. The counts of Chartres and Blois in the tenth,
eleventh, and twelfth centuries were men of importance in their day,
and one of them directly connected himself with England by a memorable
marriage. Chartres was long the dwelling-place of the excellent Adela,
the daughter of the Great William, the mother of King Stephen and of the
famous Bishop Henry of Winchester. But, while Chartres was thus closely,
though indirectly, connected with our history, it never, like Le Mans,
actually formed a part of the dominions of a common sovereign with
England and Normandy.

The cathedrals of Chartres and Le Mans are about as unlike as any two
great mediaeval churches well can be. Well nigh the only point of
likeness is that each possesses a magnificent east end of the thirteenth
century, of the usual French plan, with the apse, the surrounding
chapels, the complicated system of flying buttresses. But at Chartres
this east end is part of a whole. The crypt still witnesses to the days
of Fulbert, the lower stages of the western towers to those of Adela and
to those of John of Salisbury; but all the rest of the church, including
of course all the interior, is of an uniform style and design. The
church throughout follows the usual type of great French churches; the
eye accustomed to the buildings of England or Normandy misses the
central towers of Lincoln or of Saint Ouen's, but Chartres is not in
England or in Normandy, but in France, and its church is built
accordingly. A fairer question of taste is raised by the unequal spires
of the west front--a French feature again, but occasionally extending
into Normandy and England, as at Rouen, Llandaff, Lynn, and Canterbury
as it was. But it is only in so long and varied a front as that of Rouen
Cathedral that it is at all satisfactory. At Chartres the great south
spire is modern and of iron, but we believe it very well reproduces the
outline of the elder one of wood, and it certainly comes down heavily
and awkwardly upon the towers and upon the roof of the church. The upper
part of the north tower is frittere